


Such a lot of nice girls

by chantefable



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1960s, Backstory, Comic Book Science, Department X, F/M, Gen, Historical References, Olympics, Pre-Canon, Red Room (Marvel), Slice of Life, Soviet Union, Spies & Secret Agents, Super Soldier Serum, Telepathy, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: Natalya Alyanovna Romanova, a distinguished graduate of the Black Widow program, is currently a secretary for the Trade Representation of the USSR in Japan, and is attending the Summer Olympics with her boss, Yevgeniy Borisovich. Also known as the Winter Soldier.This is for work, but then again, everything is.If anything, it actually makes it even more meaningful in the long run.





	Such a lot of nice girls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/gifts).



> Dear impala_chick, I gathered that, in a story, you might enjoy: going together to sports events, cooking, competence, characters who clean up nicely, slow build, getting together, ambiguous endings and found family. This story has all that, but it is also from Natasha's point of view. 
> 
> Specifically, this is Natasha in the 1960s, in the beginning of her Black Widow career, with lots of world-building allusions. I was really hooked by your phrasing "she can understand him better than most", and tried to fill in the gaps suggesting why that might be.

Games of the XVIII Olympiad, Tokyo, October --, 1964

\-- a.m. 

Yevgeniy Borisovich did not look too good, Natasha thought, staring straight ahead at the cinder track. She relaxed the muscles of her face and made sure her eyes were wide and her smile was neat, nothing but guileless excitement of a low-level girl from torgpredstvo who got to attend the games. Inside, she was fuming.

Yevgeniy Borisovich was paler than usual, and she noticed fine beads of sweat at his temples. He held himself stiffly, and there was no way for Natasha to properly address the issue without breaking character. Nor was it, strictly speaking, Natasha's place to do so; Dasha had been put in charge of Yevgeniy Borisovich's accommodation and comfort, and it was clear that she was doing a poor job.

The sun peered from between the clouds, and Natasha tilted her head just so, to catch the sunlight and paint an even prettier picture in her fashionable yellow dress and coat. It also put her ear just a few centimeters closer to Yevgeniy Borisovich's mouth, and she focused on analyzing the speed and depth of his breathing. She did not like this at all.

Dasha was neither here nor there, in Natasha's opinion, very recently transferred from Moscow to Tokyo and far too full of herself. Natasha never did like the girls from the Bolshoi part of the program. The training and the work in corps de ballet was grueling enough, and that, of course, merited respect, but the Bolshoi widows were put there for a reason. And the reason was that the party elite just loved the ballet, and loved picking their mistresses there. A matter of prestige for one side, and an offer you cannot really say no to for the other, not if you want to keep working in Bolshoi. Naturally, the Department wanted to have the widows, and not random ballerinas, attached to the right people for reconnaissance and leverage. All these counter-intelligence games and power struggles, endless Swan Lakes and nothing but kefir for supper really did a number on them, if you asked Natasha. 

Not to be petty, but Yevgeniy Borisovich _clearly_ had not slept enough nor had the necessary nutrients for breakfast, and Darya literally _had one job_ here. To provide him with assistance. Natasha mentally resolved to orchestrate so that she would be kicked out. And if Natasha had to take over managing Yevgeniy Borisovich's schedule and making sure he took his medications, she would damn well handle it on top of her cover job as a secretary of torgpredstvo and her principal widow duties.

Be prepared – always prepared.

“Thank you, Yevgeniy Borisovich, this is so exciting!” Natasha dutifully recited with just the right amount of enthusiasm, as a grateful subordinate would if their boss took them to watch the athletics. She turned as she spoke to get better visuals of the surroundings. 

Petya, who was glumly sitting on Yevgeniy Borisovich's other side, took his cue and began a perfectly ordinary conversation about sports, one that required little input from Yevgeniy Borisovich, too. Natasha was grateful. Petya could be counted on; a graduate of the three-year courses of the Ministry of State Defense, he had a long enough list of operations on his resume and no one among the commanding officers so far had held a grudge against him. Hence the current sweet posting to Tokyo. You don't get where Petya got if you don't have the skills and the smarts; that's the kind of person Yevgeniy Borisovich should have at his back.

(And not Dasha, who clearly cannot manage even the most basic things. Natasha watched the pulse point on Yevgeniy Borisovich's neck out of the corner of her eye, counting.)

The rest of the support team were in position, carefully dispersed among the spectators in the stands. An older widow from the 1930s program who lived here as a Soviet doctor; a journalist; an engineer; and another widow from Natasha's program, Tamara. They had been together at Aralsk-7.

(Well, the pulse was fine, for a regular human man pushing fifty. Not too good for Yevgeniy Borisovich, though.)

Tamara looked her in the eye for a split second, before bursting into laughter and digging into her treat while her girlfriends chattered in Japanese. Natasha got the distinct impression that Tamara wholeheartedly shared her opinion of Dasha's diligence and approved of extreme measures, effective immediately. That was the thing about the latest upgrade at Aralsk-7: the residual spontaneous telepathy among their batch was occasionally disconcerting. However, the head of the laboratory had been assured it was going to dwindle – just an inconvenient side effect of achieved microbiological resistance. Oh, well.

Natasha was just about to finish fidgeting in her seat like a mindless civilian when Yevgeniy Borisovich addressed her directly.

“Are you all right, Natashenka? Is your headache from yesterday all gone?”

Of course she hadn't had a headache yesterday. She wasn't getting any aches anymore, not really. Well, bullet wounds hurt a little, but with the current serum formula injected every two months? Nothing really hurt anymore.

Immediately, she had an intrusive thought that was definitely Tamara pushing through – an image of Zinaida Pavlovna, the doctor in charge of their program – rounded cheeks, sunny smile, illegible handwriting in a thick squared notebook – _if it's that strong we're clearly not meant to last long_ – and Natasha frowned, shushing her inside her own head. Upon doing so, she realized she had been frowning already, and her face was indeed tense and not carefree. That was what had attracted Yevgeniy Borisovich's attention, enough to check up on her.

Natasha was deeply ashamed. To be so transparent! To worry Yevgeniy Borisovich! 

“Oh, no, Yevgeniy Borisovich, everything is fine. Just the sun in my eyes!” she chirped.

She could practically feel how normally unflappable Petya resisted the urge to roll his eyes. What a stupid excuse. What a stupid thing to leak your operational concerns in the first place. (What an insensitive thing to even slightly hint that Yevgeniy Borisovich might be anything but fine _and that she knew that_.)

Natasha's fists itched to count Petya's teeth, just to make him forget her moment of weakness.

Yevgeniy Borisovich kept looking at her intently, and Natasha smiled, with her persona and her self both. For a moment, he did not move at all, eerily still as stone and somehow looming – 

\- and then he smirked, with a mischievous expression that took years off his face, and then shook his finger at her, like a paternal boss might, letting her off the hook.

With her heart hammering in her chest, and outwardly perfectly delighted, Natasha the simpleton ducked her head and blushed. 

It was all right to blush. Their legend had them developing a mutual fondness and carrying a courtship with great dignity for the next six months. Yevgeniy Borisovich's next deployment required him to be publicly and credibly married to a younger wife of specific parameters. Natasha blushed strictly as a professional.

Amidst the noise of the stadium, Natasha the secretary and Petya the legal advisor kept up the babble about Larisa Latynina's and Věra Čáslavská's medals, while Natasha the widow and Petya the KGB agent stayed aware and alert.

The sun was particularly generous. Yevgeniy Borisovich squirmed in his seat, with the air of someone older who got tired easily, and Natasha struggled to estimate how much of it was affectation and how much was genuine.

20% to the latter but mostly because he's just weary all the time, in a sense… which might have been Natasha's guess, or Tamara's. When they were this close in the field, it was probably better not to think these thoughts at all.

They all liked Yevgeniy Borisovich, after all, and respected him tremendously. He was a living legend. A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a pioneer of multiple programs. There were pictures of him from the frontlines, all vibrant and alive, blood-and-milk looks captured in black and white photographs. He was a living legend, and, objectively, the fact that he was still _living_ was amazing. What had been done to him at Solnechny during the war had been beyond imagination, all the experimental serums and vaccines at once, and a prosthetic as advanced as an actual rocket. Constant upgrades for as long as the Germans had stayed there, countless successful missions. 

He wrote the damn 1950 methodological brochure they all had to cram for the widows' second level finals.

And then, well. The Thaw came, and they put Yevgeniy Borisovich on ice.

Natasha knew how privileged they were to be able work with him, learn from him. After the Red Room was founded, and the first petty squabbles with the Department were over, everyone had decided to bring Yevgeniy Borisovich back. His contribution to all further training was bound to prove invaluable, after all. 

Natasha used the moment of cheering and clapping to steal another look, just for herself. He was very handsome, clean-shaven and with a fashionable hair-cut, and built like a sambo champion – which he was, obviously. He moved efficiently, compensating for the absence of the arm and the absence of the huge weight of the original Solnechny prototype. These days, there was no prosthetic but everyone knew that Yevgeniy Borisovich was far more than just the arm. 

The day they forgot that the Winter Soldier was not the arm would be the beginning of the end -

\- _don't think that_ -

\- Tamara sounded practically panicked in her head, oddly overlaying with the gleeful monologue in Japanese she was delivering to her friends about the previous competition.

But yes, she was right. Don't think that. That is quite useless. Widows do not waste their time on bourgeois pathos and sentimentality. 

And decision-making was not Natasha's level anyway.

What mattered was fulfilling long-term and short-term objectives, and, fortunately, the microbiological resistance was excellent after the last Aralsk-7 development proved a success. Yevgeniy Borisovich had taken it too, though Dasha had hinted that there had been some interference with his previous treatments. (Yet another reason Dasha had to go; those are not the kind of rumors you spread when you are the designated carer of your commanding officer.) So these six months would be full of everyday tasks and ordinary prep work. In their case, going on dates and falling in love.

Forming a cell of society.

If she were completely honest, right now Natasha was basically living every widow's dream.

 _That_ , she could think. Tamara's smirk stabbed her somewhere in the frontal lobe.

Six months of carefully planned public appearances, and valuable time with Yevgeniy Borisovich when he could be dropping grains of wisdom about everything from battle plans to hand-to-hand combat to best things to pack for a three-week trek through the tundra. 

Six months of listening to his voice, with that odd, almost Moldovan-sounding accent that none of them had been able to figure out, even though Natasha's program had girls from all the republics, from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan. 

Six months of having the excuse to care as much as she liked, the facade of fussing over an older fiancé, making him dumplings and borscht (and maybe helping him clean weapons, and aid in physical therapy?) – and then even more, when the actual mission came. Natasha was practically giddy with anticipation. It felt even better, more real than actually falling in love. The state of _being in love_ seemed so puny and pedestrian compared to this – respect, and fierce fondness, and affinity that stemmed from no longer being merely human, either.

Maybe if the serum they were now testing on the girls from Natasha's program really worked and they actually _stopped aging_ , they would give it to Yevgeniy Borisovich, too. Maybe he would get better. People like Zinaida Pavlovna, who had been with the Department for a long time, said that Yevgeniy Borisovich had always had a bit of shell-shock or something, but obviously the cryotherapy had its risks, too. So maybe they could help, however indirectly, this man who had been the first and the greatest in so many things only they knew about.

Maybe, however indirectly, she and Yevgeniy Borisovich would get more years together.

They sat side by side, their shoulders brushing, and it was perfectly acceptable and within the parameters of the legend they were building for Natasha to offer Yevgeniy Borisovich a sweet treat she had brought in her dainty purse. She could practically _sense_ his blood sugar stabilizing as he absent-mindedly whistled 'Kak mnogo devushek khoroshikh' from the Jolly Fellows. Or perhaps not so absent-mindedly, because in his eyes there seemed to be an utterly different song, entirely unfamiliar to Natasha.

At least for now.

It would not do to be too arrogant, or self-assured, but she had more than six months to study those eyes and learn.

As soon as she got rid of Dasha, everything was going to be quite good.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the story is also the title of the song Bucky is whistling, Kak mnogo devushek khoroshikh / Such a lot of nice girls from the Soviet jazz musical Vesyoliye rebyata / Jolly Fellows (1934).
> 
> About the setting of this story: 1964 Summer Olympics did take place in Tokyo, and the athletes did compete on cinder track (for the last time). 
> 
> They are watching athletics at the National Stadium (48,000 seats capacity), on some day between October 14 and October 21. The small talk is about gymnastics, not athletics: during the 1964 Olympics, Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina won two gold medals, a silver medal and two bronze medals, while Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská won three gold medals, including the individual all-around competition, replacing Latynina as the reigning champion.
> 
> In 1964, Japan was the third largest partner of the USSR (among the capitalist countries) and the Trade Representation (torgpredstvo) was an important institution. 
> 
> In order to ground the super soldier serums etc. in at least a semblance of reason, within this story they are secret cutting edge scientific experiments conducted in closed Soviet cities, with distinctly surrealistic and magical side effects. All historical detail is used extremely fictitiously.
> 
> Solnechny - a closed administrative territorial formation in the Tver region. Since 1937, the location of the Biotechnical Institute of the Red Army, developing vaccines, serums and means of resistance to biological weapons for the military. After WWII, all German scientists working in the rocket sector were gathered there, and their research institute and production facilities kept operating after the scientists were sent back to DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) in 1951-1953.
> 
> Aralsk-7 - a closed administrative territorial formation in Uzbekistan. From 1942 to 1992, the location of a military biochemical polygon and research facilities for testing microbiological / bacteriological weapons on animals.
> 
> Sambo - a Soviet martial arts and self-defense system originally developed for NKVD and special internal military training, combining various sports and traditional martial arts (e.g. Armenian, Georgian, Buryat, Swiss martial arts, sumo, judo, etc.).
> 
> The Thaw or Khruschev's Thaw - a period of reorganization and liberalization following Stalin's death in 1953. 
> 
> For narrative purposes, it made sense that if Bucky was active before that, the change and power struggle around whatever happened in the super soldier department or whatever affected him. Within this story, 1953 is his first cryo, and the Red Room is established towards the end of Khruschev's era / eve of Brezhnev's, and he is brought back to work with the Black Widows. Following the logic here, the Red Room and the Department X, both doing comic book super things, would become opposed and fighting for influence kind of like the Ministry of Interior and the Committee of State Security of the USSR did in history, and Bucky would keep getting cryofreezed because he just cannot navigate the backroom politics of two agencies, with damage to his health done despite various super serums (like something like the Black Widow infinity serum from the comics that gets mentioned here), until by the time of Perestroika and the 1991 events shown in Civil War he is basically, in terms of super soldier development, a Fabergé egg used to hammer nails.
> 
> For this story, Yevgeniy Borisovich (Yevgeniy, son of Boris) was chosen as Bucky's name and patronymic as the most close-sounding to the name and surname James Barnes. (He certainly has a surname as well, but it was not relevant to this story.) Since Natasha is not explicitly informed of Yevgeniy Borisovich's backstory, it is deliberately ambiguous here, but there are hints allowing to extrapolate that he was found amnesiac and severely injured and assumed to have been an enemy combatant, then sent as a test subject for magic comic book science super soldier experiments (at Solnechny), fought in WWII as part of the Soviet army and eventually built a life for himself, within the existing circumstances. And he has at least partially recalled his prior life as Bucky, but since so much has happened and Steve is definitely dead anyway, he just lives on and works for Department X.


End file.
